


Muted Tones of Life

by Chibiness87



Series: An Exercise in Nostalgia [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Cancer Arc, Episode Related, Episode: s04e14 Memento Mori, F/M, MSR UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 23:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14091900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibiness87/pseuds/Chibiness87
Summary: Of all the colours hecansee, he hates black and white the most.





	Muted Tones of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, I like that I gave up my job and went back to uni to do a Masters. Three week spring break? This is most definitely one of those times.

**Muted tones of life** , by **chibiness87**  
**Rating** : T  
**Season/Spoilers** : 4.14 Memento Mori  
**Disclaimer** : Not mine

* * *

 

 **Summary** : Of all the colours he _can_ see, he hates black and white the most.

* * *

 

 **A/N** : Sometimes, I like that I gave up my job and went back to uni to do a Masters. Three week spring break? This is most definitely one of those times.

* * *

 

The chime from his phone breaks him out of his stupor. The office around him is dark, case file strewn on the desk, and it takes him a minute of blinking at the ringing cell for his tired brain to remember in order to make it stop, he has to pick up.

“Mulder.”

“Mulder? It’s me.”

He smiles, instantly feeling more awake. “Hey, Scully, I was just about to call you.” A small lie, but she doesn’t need to know. Besides, things are still a little awkward between them following her most recent trip to the city of Brotherly Love. (He’s still getting over the dart of betrayal in his gut every time he thinks about it. But, he figures it’s about time he got over himself.) With a smile, he picks up the file he was supposed to be perusing. “There’s something here I wanted you to…”

“Mulder.”

Her voice is strange. Flat. It has the smile slipping from his face in an instant. “What?” When she doesn’t answer immediately, he feels his heart rate spike. “You ok, Scully?”

Her answer is so quiet, he knows if he were anywhere else than their quiet office, he would have missed it. “I don’t know.”

Everything stops.

The tick of the clock, the hum of the air con, his breathing.

His heart.

Trying to keep his voice level, he manages to ask, “Are you hurt?”

He tries to remind himself to keep calm. She is conscious enough to call him, so whatever it is can’t be that bad.

Right?

“Um…”

Forget keeping calm. He is in his coat, car keys clamped in his fist, taking the stairs to the garage two at a time; the wait for the elevator too much for him to handle.

“Where are you?” She doesn’t answer, but he can hear her breathing, so he tries again. “Scully. Where are you?”

This time, she does answer, though it does little to slow his heart rate. “I uh, I’m at Holy Cross Memorial.”

Fumbling slightly with the keys, he finally manages to pull the door open. “I’m getting in the car right now, you hear? I’ll be there soon.” He goes to hang up, only to pull the phone back to his ear, remembering at the last second to ask, “Which ward?”

“O… Oncology.” He falls into the driver’s seat with a thump, all grace gone, at the whisper of the small word, his eyes closing in silent agony.

Please. God.

No.

He tries with all his might to keep her from being able to pick up his thoughts from his voice. “I’ll be there in less than twenty minutes, Scully.” Damn DC traffic all to hell, if the cars don’t get out of his way he’ll run it.

Scully, always good at reading him, doesn’t fall for it. “No, I’m sorry, I’m fine. You don’t need to come.”

“Twenty minutes, Dana.”

He hangs up, throws the cell to the seat next to him, heart in his throat and hands clenched on the wheel. It takes him the whole of his concentration not to crash the damn car on his drive over to see her, weaving in and out of lanes and not caring a dot, jaw clenched and gut churning the whole way.

He will never get used to this.

He never _wants_ to get used to this.

Driving to hospitals where one of them is a patient should not be a forte for them.

The flowers are an afterthought, because that what you do when you visit someone in hospital, isn’t it? Bring flowers? He jokes about stealing them from another patient, anything to keep this moment from happening. He can see the scan in her hand, and, while no medical doctor, he knows when something looks off.

The big bright white dot right in the middle of the scan? That’s definitely off.

And then she says, in the most technical, clinical detached form she can, like it isn’t even her she’s talking about, that she has cancer.

A tumour.

A brain tumour.

An inoperable brain tumour, which, given half a chance, will burrow into her head and take her away from him and he cannot, can _not_ deal with this, not when it feels like the bottom of his world has just fallen out.

The urge to hug her, to hold her to press her against him tight and remind himself that _she is still here, goddammit, she is still alive right now_ (he cannot, will not think past that) is overpowering, and he takes a step forward, biting his cheek when she takes one back.

Her eyes yell words more clearly than her voice ever could (has he ever told her he’s thankful she has blue eyes, eyes that he can see, right down to his soul?) and he heeds the warning in them. _Don’t_ , they say. _Not here. Not_ **_here_**.

“But it’s treatable.” The words escape him, more of a statement than a question, fear and hope waging their own personal war on his insides, and he wants to laugh in her face when she asks him why he can’t accept that this is real. That this is happening.

 _Don’t you know?_ He wants to ask, despair threatening to overwhelm him. _God, Scully, don’t you_ **_know_**?

She asks him if he’ll make her case with Skinner to go back and see the women she met last year, the ones with similar scars and similar tumours, and he secretly promises himself if Skinner says no his resignation will be signed right there and then.

She has followed him into hell, does she really think he won’t do the same for her?

And then a deeper, darker thought catches him.

Other women, claiming to be abductees, abductees with Scully no less, all with chips in the back of their necks, and now, at least some suffering from the same condition she has.

What if this isn’t just some biological twist of fate?

What if it’s engineered?

If there was any doubt of her doing any of this alone, of him not being able to keep his shit together _for her_ , it is gone immediately.

He knows his thoughts must be written all over his face when her own relaxes, and he sees some of the scared woman he knows is cowering behind the tough G-Woman FBI agent persona.

“Thanks.”

He nods, eyes unconsciously tracing over her face, committing every detail of her to his memory, like she hasn’t already planted herself there.

He has never hated being colour-blind more.

Her eyes, always piercing (thank her god she doesn’t have brown eyes; they’d never leave a mark on his soul the way her shade of blue does) close slowly, and he knows she knows what he’s doing. Finally stepping close to him, she leans her head against his chest for a moment, catching one of his hands in hers. “I’m fine, Mulder.”

“Don’t.” He pulls back, unable to stop his hand tracing over her forehead, over her nose, across her cheekbone, swiping a stand of hair away from her face in the process, idly wondering how the muted tones he sees compares to those of a normal-vision person. He shakes his head at her, once, slowly. “Don’t.”

Her chin wobbles, and it reminds him of a hallway before she fell apart against him, battered and bruised, and he pulls her close once more. He can feel her breath strengthen, maintaining control, piecing herself back together. A gentle squeeze of his hand he didn’t realise she was still holding, and then she pulls back.

Swallowing back his own fear and pain, he nods. Presses his lips to her forehead for a moment, unknowingly right over the centre of the mass threatening to take her away from him. Capturing her gaze, he nods to the door.

“You wanna get out of here?”

She nods, pulling the films from the light box, and sliding them into a folder. He watches her pull her coat on, her agent persona back in full control.

“Is your car here?”

Picking up the folder, she turns to face him. “No.” She glances down, before peering at him out of the corner of her eye. “No, I caught a cab. Figured I could get a ride off you.” She raises an eyebrow in question, and he nods.

“Ok then.” He picks up her bag and her flowers, pulling the door open and then standing by it, waiting for her to proceed him through.

Transferring items so they are held in one hand, he places his free hand at the small of her back, right over the skin of her new tattoo, and thinks back to the report of its design.

An ouroboros.

A snake tail’s growing from the mouth of its head; a life everlasting.

They will get through this.

They will beat this.

She is his everything, and he’s only just beginning to realise what that means. He will not let anything more be taken from her.

Even if he has to make a deal with the devil himself.

* * *

End

Thoughts?

 


End file.
